Hey, Bonnie,

Yes, I can do it purely through code. I've checked the code generated by the designer, and can do the same thing myself. Only drawback is that I'd lose the ability to use the control's designer, but I'm only using a handful of properties (font, text, background color, etc.), it's not a huge loss.

Since I'm writing something to add buttomitems on the fly, I'm moving in that direction anyway.

Thanks, you gave me something to think about
Kevin